I’m All Lost In, #119: Apartment accoutrements; subway synechdoce; and the #12 bus.
I’m All Lost In …
the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.
#119
First: This week’s X-is-Greater-than-Y recap
Imitation New Wave > Original 1980s New Wave
It’s a very new wave notion that the artificial article would be more authentic than the original. But indeed: The grandchildren of 1980s synth pop have it down to a science.
I’ve mentioned Nation of Language before [I’m All Lost In, #75, 3/22/25.] Have I also mentioned Cold Cave? Along with a cohort of other modern bands, these are two of the many convincing replicants swiping the original operating system.
This wave of 21st century new wavers defies a sweeping statement I made several years ago. I claimed there were only two kinds of pop music you couldn’t revive in earnest: Early 1960s girl group 45s and early 1980s synth pop. I’m still right about the former, but not the later!
The Soft Cell deep cut Chips on My Shoulder was throbbing at my favorite Pike St. thrift shop this week, giving me some Gen X hope that the original iteration of synth pop remained superior to today’s reboot.
Decades ago In high school, I dug Soft Cell’s classic new wave single Tainted Love. Momentarily convinced that these prototypes would set the record straight, I rushed home to put on Soft Cell’s 1981 debut, Non-stop Erotic Cabaret. I wanted to prove that my generation still mattered. Nope. Despite Tainted Love and Chips on My Shoulder (and Memorabilia and Secret Life), it’s not a brilliant LP.
Yes, 1980s new wave and synth pop had a prescient sound and vision. But appropriately, the simulacrum version prevails.
A Coffee Shop that Stays Open Until 10 pm on Weeknights and Midnight on Friday and Saturday Nights > a Coffee Shop that Doesn’t
There’s a brightly lit—and totally lit—Vietnamese coffeeshop on Battery St. & 3rd Ave. on the Belltown-side of Downtown. It’s called Plus84; +84 is the international area code for Vietnam. Defying Seattle’s early bedtime hours, this café stays open until 10 pm on weeknights and until Midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.
Plus84 is a student haven. Accordingly, it specializes in sugary coffee drinks: Hanoi Egg Cream; Dorian Ice Cream Coffee; Marble Coco Espresso; and Black Milk Tea. These caffeinated concoctions are served on a bed of chewy, pebble ice.
Plus84, Sesame Cookie Latte, 1/23/26
I had the Sesame Cookie Latte. It came with a striation of slate-speckled black sesame foam on top. This wild choice certainly contradicts my no-sugar diet [I’m All Lost In, #99, 9/8/25], but I had some alarming dental work done on Friday morning and it seemed like the perfect complement to the cocktail of Ibuprofen, Tylenol, and antibiotics I was taking.
I landed at Plus84 twice this week; XDX lives in Belltown now and we’d been checking out some nearby galleries.
As opposed to the art shows, Plus84 was packed.
Plus84, 3rd & Battery in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, Friday night, 1/23/26
Taking Down Holiday Decorations in January > Leaving Them Up
It’s late January. What is my next door neighbor thinking? This was the view inside my apartment building hallway this week:
Holiday Treason, 1/23/26
Christmas has been over for a month.
Another neighbor also hung holiday decorations. And, understandably, he let them linger on his door for perhaps a minute too long as well during the first days of January. But he has now welcomed and acknowledged reality. He promptly took them down last week before the display turned into a public cry for help.
To my delight, this responsible neighbor tacks up an elf every Christmas season; despite being Jewish, I’m disproportionately pro my neighbor’s Christmas elf. It signals that it’s time to relax, be festive, and be reflective. A lovely yearly ritual. But one that definitely has a By Date.
12/12/25
Reality. 1/23/26
This healthy neighbor’s public recognition that the season of love and light has ended is certainly more in sync with this January’s season of ICE in the United States.
Onto this week’s obsessions…
1) Apartment Energy & Accoutrements
After a slovenly week marked by whiskey and nonchalant indolence toward dishes and laundry, I suddenly found myself re-energized and drawn to the trendy shops. The home decor shops in particular.
At first, I was perusing the youth-culture shelves of depeche mode knick knacks and teenage paraphernalia on Capitol Hill’s Pike & Pine St. corridor. By midweek, I was standing in the showroom at a bourgeois interior design store called Roufus & Co. on the fancy northern edge of Capitol Hill. I bought two plush, handmade throw pillows there.
My new-year preoccupation with empowering my apartment didn’t forgo my lifelong 1966-NYU aesthetic altogether though. In addition to the expensive down pillows, plus the (two) Persian rugs I bought, my apartment therapy buying spree this week also included a groovy white Scandinavian floor lamp and a cool art show poster that I pilfered from a telephone pole on the Drag. I hung that on my bedroom door.
A mod new lamp for my apt. 1/19/26
I took care of the dishes and laundry too, by the way.
2) Subway Synecdoche
The New Yorker published a poem this week that gives me an opportunity to follow up on last week’s item about private symbolism [I’m All Lost In, #118, 1/18/26.] It also gives me an opportunity to note that the poems in my own poetry books—Shops Close Too Early (2022) and The Night of Electric Bikes (2023)—aren’t the only ones that see mass transit as a metaphor.
”The trains were free./ I mean: No one checked your ticket.”
Those are the breathtaking concluding lines to Richie Hofmann’s cascading city poem Men’s Beds where the city’s train system stands in for city values in general, a bit of poetic synechdoche.
The poem, published in the 1/19/26 New Yorker, is about trying to mend a broken heart by escaping into the city. Into its bookstores and coffeeshops (“buying paperbacks” and “iced americanos”). Into the joy of its daily fashion show (wearing “a designer hoodie”). Into its “promiscuous” “feelings most of all” towards the “strangers” you “yearn” for.
Emphasis [his] on “feelings.” That’s the only word Hofmann repeats in this spare poem of 25 clipped, single lines. The repetition renders Men’s Beds less a sex poem and more a humanist love poem. Human connection is possible, Hofmann is telling us, in the deceptively anonymous urban landscape where so “many lives happened inside those walls.”
Cities were originally defined by their walls; like the ancient cities in Mesopotamia. In Hofmann’s poem, walls remain a defining urban feature. This time they work as a symbolic contradiction representing both the millions of solo souls housed separately from apartment to apartment while simultaneously delineating the millions of possibilities for kinship at hand.
This is where Hofmann’s subway metaphor finale comes in. Cued up with the instructive lines “At least I wasn’t going to be lonely./I moved around the city,” Hofmann’s trains symbolize his overall urban experience as he travels through a rush of urban spaces and moments. On this urban odyssey, Hofmann discovers that the subway, an enclosed space in its own right where tens of thousands of strangers move through the city together, is a welcoming place by default.
“No one checked your ticket.” This observation reflects how cities are defined by their endless capacity to welcome people aboard. It’s the antithesis of Trumpism. And it’s a truth about cities I believe will help America overcome today’s pending authoritarianism [I’m All Lost In, #118, 1/18/26.]
3) The #12 Bus
Despite being a partisan pedestrian, I have found myself deferring to the #12 bus for my regular jaunts to and from the Pike-Pine Drag lately. It could just be the colder weather. Or it could just be that I realized I don’t have to limit my #12 trips to Trader Joe’s runs.
The #12 route has always stopped directly across the street from my apartment. But now that it’s been re-routed off Madison St. thanks to the Rapid Ride G [“I’m All Lost In, #50, 9/7/24”] and onto Pike-Pine, I’m tapping on more often.
Honestly, it’s a revelation. And one I recently noted as a side note [I’m All Lost In, #108, 11/8/25.] But it has now grown into an obsession.
Riding the #12 west on Pine St. to meet XDX for the Downtown Art Walk, 1/23/26
Yes, as I typically do, I chose the flaneur option on Wednesday night; this was after spending the evening Downtown. I clocked 6.1 miles walking that day. But notably, several other times this week (armed with my Persian rugs on one occasion, grimacing with cold hands on another, and simply beat on Friday night after another Downtown excursion), it struck me I could hop on the #12 as it turned around at 3rd & Pine. I was happy I did as it took the dedicated bus lane back up the hill.
Certainly, I could have taken my beloved light rail; there’s an entrance at 3rd & Pine. But riding the train would have left me with another mile to walk. By comparison, the #12 stops directly across the street from my apartment.
And sometimes you just want to get home.
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P.s. For those who want to bounce, you’ve been warned: Here’s my tennis report.
I’ve been staying up late to watch Australian Open matches all week. And getting up early to listen to the daily Tennis Podcast recaps.
I even wrote a poem about Turkish tennis player Zeynep Sönmez, the World women’s No. 112 (and Turkey’s No. 1). In the heartwarming story of the week: Sönmez rushed to the aid of a fainting ball girl during a Round 1 match. My poem is called The Ball Kid Faints.
Sönmez won the match, upsetting World No. 11 Ekaterina Alexandrova, eventually making it to the third round where she lost to insolent World No. 94, Yulia Putintseva. Putintseva’s victory dance—she started twerking in the direction the Turkish fans—went from sort of funny to very obnoxious very quickly. I was happy to see World No. 30 and sudden senstation, American teenager Iva Jovic, destroy Putintseva in the following round. Jovic, by the way, was the one sly pick I made in the Australian Open fantasy league I joined last week. [I’m All Lost In, #118, 1/18/26.]
Next up for Jovic: Her first-ever grand slam quarterfinal where she’s playing my favorite player, World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, or Daffy Saby as she’s known in my household. I’ve got Saby in the fantasy league as well.
Saby certainly has her Peter Parker moments [I’m All Lost In, #15, 1/25/24.] But they are paired with super hero form and thunder. After Saby shut down rising star and fan favorite, 19-year-old Victoria Mboko 6-1, 7-6 (1) in the fourth round on Saturday, The Athletic used the occasion as a prompt to write about the contradiction that defines Sabalenka’s game. Saby’s victory that night came with her all-time-record-setting 20th grand slam tiebreaker win, a stat that certainly reflects her assassin’s calm under pressure; she displaced tennis great Novak Djokovic for the record. But it also reflects her unsteady history of not being able to wrap up matches neatly.
The Athletic’s tennis writing typically reads as if a frustrated editor gave up on it. And warning, that’s the case again in their Saby exegesis.
In one way, winning so many tiebreaks illustrates an ability to play under pressure. But so many of her tiebreak wins come after she has failed to serve out a match and / or given up a lead, also illustrating both the ability to raise her game when it matters and some difficulty with being a favorite or front-runner.
But I admit: Casting Sabalenka’s tiebreaker win over Mboko as a metaphor for the heroic flaw that defines Daffy Saby’s game makes sense.